The Chemistry of Cookery

for Increasing it.’ Rumford used wood as fuel, and his kitchen-ranges were constructed of brickwork with a separate fire for each pot, the pot being set in in the brickwork immediately above the fireplace in such manner that the flame and heated products of combustion surrounded the pot on their way to the exit flue. The quantity of fuel was adjusted to each operation, and with wood embers a long sustained moderate heat was easily obtained. With coal-fires such separate firing would be troublesome, as coal cannot be so easily kindled on requirement as wood. With our roaring, wasteful kitchen furnaces and still more wasteful cooks, the long-sustained moderate heat is not practicable without some further device. I found that, by using a ‘milk scalder,’ which is a water-bath similar to a glue-pot, but on a large scale, I could obtain Rumford’s results over a common kitchen-range with very little trouble, and no risk of baking the bottom part of the porridge. I further found that even a longer period of stewing than he prescribes is desirable. I made a hearty meal on No. 1 soup, and found it as satisfactory as any dinner of meat, potatoes, &c., of any number of courses; and, as a chemist, I assert without any hesitation, that such a meal is demonstrably of equal or superior nutritive value to an ordinary Englishman’s slice of beef diluted with potatoes. The No. 2 soup is not so satisfactory. Rumford was wrong in his estimate of the value of potatoes. In the formula for Rumford’s soup it is stated that the bread should not be cooked, but added just before serving the soup. Like everything else in his practical programmes, this was prescribed with a philosophical reason. His reasons may have been fanciful sometimes, but he never acted stupidly, as the vulgar majority of mankind usually do when they blindly follow an established custom without knowing any reason for so doing, or even attempting to discover a reason. In his essay on ‘The Pleasure of Eating, and of the Means that may be Employed for Increasing it,’